Page:Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky - Third Anniversary of the Russian October Revolution (1921).djvu/7

 Rh themselves, and commenced their struggle for the overthrow of the Soviet Government. They found it most convenient to commence their work in our outlying provinces, particularly in the Cossack territories where the spirit of the old regime was strong. Thus by the end of 1917 the outlines of a counter-revolutionary centre could be distinguished in the territories of the Don, Orenbourg, and Ural Cossacks; apart from this strong resistance to the establishment of Soviet authority was offered at Irkutsk by the officers and Cadets. In the Ukraine the bourgeois forces were organising themselves already under the regime of Kerensky. They demanded an independent Ukraine. After the seizure of power by the workers in Russia, the bourgeoisie and the intelligenzia of the workers and peasants, raising the cry of independence from Moscow and from the Muscovites. Independence, which they subsequently sold to German imperialism, was certainly not the underlying motive; their aim was to break thémselves loose from the Revolution in Russia, to save their power, their capital, their land, and to prevent the workers and poor peasants of the Ukraine from uniting with the victorious workers and peasants of the rest of Russia. A new centre of the counter-revolution was thus formed at Kiev with which the Soviet Government had to fight.

At first the Soviet Government was successful on all the fronts. General Alexeyev, formerly in the command of the Tzarist army on the German front, gathered round himself on the Don a good many of the old guard officers, who were largely either land-